Geoffrey Tracy, better known as Chef Geoff, may be apoplectic about a proposed 190 percent hike in the minimum wage for tipped restaurant workers, but a group representing those workers is celebrating.

The New York City-based Restaurant Opportunities Center followed Tracy’s letter to D.C. Councilman Vincent Orange, which I reported Tuesday, with one of its own, thanking the at-large councilman for his “commitment to working class families.”

“With a growing restaurant industry, Washington, D.C needs to ensure that tipped workers have a right to afford to live in the district; tipped workers includes servers, who experience three times the poverty rate of the workforce as a whole,” the group wrote.

In addition to raising the standard minimum wage to $12.50 an hour by Jan. 1, 2018, Orange’s bill would hike the tipped restaurant employee minimum wage from $2.77 to $4.75 by Jan. 1, 2015, $5.75 by 2016, $6.75 by 2017 and $7.75 by 2018.

As of Jan. 1, 2019, under the bill, the tip wage must be 70 percent of D.C.’s minimum wage — a minimum of $8.75 an hour. Tracy said that would cost him nearly $500,000 a year, putting him out of business.

The Restaurant Opportunities Center letter can be read in its entirety by clicking "view all" at the bottom of the page:

Thank you for your commitment to working class families. On Tuesday you introduced a bill that proposed to raise the minimum wage for tipped employees in D.C. to $8.25 an hour from the current $2.77.

Currently there are seven states that have no difference between their tipped minimum wage and regular minimum wage, and have restaurant industries that are on the rise. In those seven states, over the next 10 years, restaurant employment is projected to grow by 10.6% (compared to just 9.9% in the rest of the country). California, the state with largest restaurant employment has raised its minimum wage for tipped workers to 110% of the federal regular minimum wage.

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